Do Not Turn Aside To The Right Or To The Left

Deuteronomy 5:27-32 – Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says. Then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you. We will listen and obey.” The Lord heard you when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me, “I have heard what this people said to you. Everything they said was good. Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever! “Go, tell them to return to their tents. But you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess.” So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left.

Joshua 22:5 – But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to keep his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Deuteronomy 4:1,29 – Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you… But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Deuteronomy 17:19-20 – It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

Joshua 1:7 – “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.

Application:

• ·         Both Moses and Joshua saw that obedience to the laws of God would require love and service from the heart.
• ·         God’s call to His people to hear and obey is a frequent theme in Deuteronomy and elsewhere in the Old Testament.
• ·         “With all your heart and…soul” is applied not only to how the Lord’s people should seek Him but also to how they should fear Him, live in obedience to Him, love and serve Him, and, after forsaking Him, renew their allegiance and commitment to Him.
• ·         The king was not above God’s law, any more than were the humblest of his subjects.
• ·         Success was not guaranteed unconditionally.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV